Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1 MARCH 2023

24 12 EDWARD MCGUIRE RHA (1932 - 1986) Dead Cat (1984) Oil on board, 60 x 90cm (231/2 x 351/2”) Signed with initials and dated (19)’84 Also signed, inscribed and dated verso Provenance: From the Collection of Patrick MacEntee SC € 5,000 - 8,000 13 EDWARD MCGUIRE RHA (1932 - 1986) John Jordan (1982) Oil on board, 60 x 44cm (231/2 x 171/4”) Signed with initials and dated (19)’82. Also signed, inscribed and dated verso Provenance: From the Collection of Patrick MacEntee SC € 6,000 - 8,000 McGuire found this mummified feline in an old dairy on a farm in Co. Wicklow in 1980. There is a strong resemblance to the famous remains of Dublin’s Christchurch Cathedral cat who, in the 1850s, when chasing a rat, got caught in an organ pipe and being stuck, eventually died and became desiccated. The two animals were discovered when the organ was being restored and are now preserved, under glass, in the Crypt. In literature they appear as a simile in James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake when someone is described as being “…. as stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that Christchurch organ ….”. John Jordan, the poet, critic and short-story writer was born in Dublin in 1930 and was educated at Synge Street CBS, University College Dublin and Pembroke College, Oxford. He taught at UCD, Memorial University in New- foundland and at Princeton. A member of Aosdańa, Jor- dan was described by MacDara Woods of Poetry Ireland ‘When John Jordan died in 1988 he had forty years of literary endeavour and achievement behind him as edi- tor, critic, story-teller, and poet, and as academic, broad- caster, and man of the Theatre. And the very variety of the disciplines makes it hard to achieve a clear view of any one of them: when you focus on any one thing an- other stands out.’